Thursday, September 27, 2012

Manplus2 built this university chemistry lab. I really like how he captured a lot of the details found in all of the various labs I've ever taught in.

Details include the periodic table, and a waste container for disposing broken glass, needles, and other sharps.
Here's an eye wash and safety shower.
Here our student is working in the hood. Hey, shouldn't he be wearing goggles?

Friday, September 21, 2012

An international team of scientists and engineers are working together at the High Energy Accelerator Research Organisation (KEK) in Tsukuba, Japan. Electrons and positrons are slammed together in a particle accelerator at very high energies. The result of these collisions will be studied using the BELLE-II-detector to learn about CP symmetry violation. The idea here is that the equations used to describe matter suggest that you should be able to switch a particle with it's anti-particle, and the Charge and Parity should work out the same. However, everything around us seems to be made of matter, not antimatter. So why, if the equations suggest that these should be equally probable. This is one of the things that the Belle experiment is examining.

This LEGO model was on display last year at the funding agency of the KEK. I don't know the name of the builder.

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

I've previously noted Apojove's (i.e. Stephen Pakbaz's) Curiosity rover, here we see it being lowered from the sky crane, what mission planners had dubbed the 'seven minutes of terror'. Stephen offered his rover as a Cuusoo project and it achieved the crucial 10,000 votes. I hope they make this, as this seems perfectly in line with LEGO's and Cuusoo's ideals - given past LEGO/NASA collaborations and the two initial Cuusoo Japan sets. The only sticking point is that by the time a set gets made, public interest in the rover may have waned. I also wanted to highlight this interview with Stephen on Brothers-Brick about a month ago.